Histeria
by Dr. Abraxas
Summary: A professor of history uncovers the secret of an ancient civilization of demons living among humans and who use humans as food. Can he warn the world in time? Or will the evidence go up in smoke? And is he closer to those demons than he thinks?


**"Histeria" by Abraxas (from 2008-08-27)**

"Thank you," Master Higurashi said, softly, with a bow. Strands of white, long hair bounced off of his lips. "It was a very kind gesture to return it."

"Er, no problem," said the man on the bed. His legs was braced and elevated by straps. "Just hope you weren't troubled by all of it."

Master Higurashi, who wore a thick red coat despite the spring, only nodded a reply. Then smiled. And promptly exited with the doctor.

The man on the bed shut his eyes and wished everything away. The pain, mixed with that feeling of sickness. The loss of work. The waste of time. He was not yet thinking about the car - totaled and smashed - and the bill - growing each and every day of hospitalization.

By the gods! If only he had not found it. Then nothing would have happened.

"You look like hell, Noguichi!" A jovial kind of voice broke through the fog of regret. "And they tell me you survived?"

"Kano!" The man greeted his friend with a smile. "I must've worried you."

"Oh, no, it's like every day that my friend crashes into a building." Very casually, as if to be thoughtless, he dropped his jacket atop his friend's free, un-elevated leg. "So - what do you have to say? I mean - you're the _responsible_ one - remember?"

Noguichi sighed again wished the events of the last few months did not happen. What he would have given to erase the reality of it.

"I was irresponsible, Kano. You wouldn't believe it. You couldn't imagine it."

Kano laughed.

"Try me, kid."

"I found _something_ and it scared me shitless."

Kano raised an eyebrow - Noguchi did not use such color wantonly.

"Must've been _something._"

"Yeah." Noguichi sat a little. As much as the straps that elevated his leg allowed it. "I got to tell somebody though, I mean, I don't want to go crazy."

"What did you find, Nogu?"

"Proof - _we are not alone._"

Kano gazed at his friend as he would have studied a lunatic.

"You mean aliens again?"

"No. Aliens? No! It's different. It's _weirder_. Did you see that man who left this room?" Kano nodded. "The man with the long, white hair?" Again Kano nodded. "What if I told you that man _is Inuyasha_? The real, actual _Inuyasha_!"

Kano paused - then leaned, slowly, into Noguichi.

"I say _they_ spiked _your_ IV."

Then he laughed again.

"I'm serious, Kano, listen."

Kano sighed.

"That crash must've scrambled your mind."

"Look, I know, _I know_, it's not possible to believe it. But it's true. They are here with us and I know it. And I know how to prove it. Listen, please, Kano!"

His friend smirked, resigned to yet another product of wild and free imagination.

"I'm a professor of history but not the kind of history students read about at school. You know, the oldest continuous records go back five thousand years, yet, _we_ go back fifty thousand years. What happened between then and now? We don't know. It's lost. All of it. But there have been traces - evidences - of a secret kind of history. Stories about Atlantis and Shangri-La point to clues that maybe we have been at the game of civilization tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years. Beyond anything we imagined possible. Think about it. The ancients, from the Greeks to the Maya, possessed extraordinary knowledge of the world. Astronomy. Pi. Zero. Maps of faraway, distant continents. Information needed to build pyramids. Where came that knowledge and why was it known _everywhere?_"

"OK. You blasted me with this stuff already, what's the point, Nogu?"

"The point is that I _understand_ now. If there used to be maps of the world, who kept them? If there were mythologies common throughout humanity, who told them, again and again? You know, every single culture kept stories about demons, why? Because somebody - _somebody_ - spread it. Imagine if we were not alone. Suppose there existed another race of man, older and wiser than us, living with us. For whatever reason they can't compete with us, directly, maybe their birthrates are abysmal, maybe their bodies are fragile - whatever the reason - they chose to be anonymous. But, along the way, to keep attention off of them, they dropped these bits and pieces of information - as required - specific little things designed to _direct_ history. To _engineer_ civilization."

"I don't follow you, kid." He sipped a cup of water then blinked. "If they were afraid of us, wouldn't they try to destroy us?"

"Slavery, brutality, even genocide - they planted those ideas into us. It's clear, so, so clear.

"Look, I watch anime, like everybody. I liked Inuyasha. I watched it religiously. The habit was so - bad - that I started to write fanfiction.

"Yes, I know you think it's stupid and it is, isn't it? I should have been doing my work."

"I just can't see you doing it. Writing about characters dildoing with fishheads - or - maybe I can -" Kano teased. "Was it good?"

Noguichi eye-rolled.

"I thought it was. Well. I wrote a lot of weepy romantic stories. Most liked the fluff except a few people. Yeah, that's what started it - this adventure. I mean they really, really hated it. And they hated me too. The worse part of it wasn't just that they flamed me every time I posted, it's that they actively sought to turn the rest of the fandom against me."

"That's, quite, mature." Another sip and the cup was refilled. "It's crap like that that keeps me out of fandom."

"They didn't like that my stories took a few liberties."

"Did you slash?" Kano asked slyly.

Noguichi blushed.

"Maybe a couple of stories but that's not the point." Again he tried to sit. Again the straps about his legs prevented that motion. "Those trolls were such know-it-alls. Like they _knew_ who and what the characters _where_. At first I was miffed; I mean, the whole thing, it was ridiculous. If you don't like a story then don't read it. Skip it. The archives are full of stories. Why come back again and again to those you don't like? It's creepy, actually, if you think of it.

"Then it intrigued me. I had to know who those people thought they were. So I investigated them. They were foolish enough to be members of groups and joining them under sock puppet accounts allowed me to gather more and more information. Then I followed those trolls into DeadDiary. With that I uncovered their activities on and off line."

"It sounds like obsession to me. Still. What's all of this got to do with _others among us?_"

"Yes, yes, it's all about _them_. Just wait."

Noguichi sat against the pillow.

"Maybe I took it too far. If I let it go then this would not have happened. But. That's my problem, isn't it? _I need to know._

"I learned that two of the trolls were going to attend a convention in Tokyo. They were going as cosplay Sesshoumaru and Rin and that a third, mysterious troll was coming as cosplay Naraku.

"Of course, Kano, I attended too.

"The day of the convention - I arrived by the train then I languished about the complex with tourists. I spied those who entered and exited. There weren't a lot of cosplayers - yet - almost everyone was a fan of Inuyasha. Soon I counted five Narakus and seven Sesshoumarus. There must have been twenty Rins when attendance peaked. But - _but_ - I noted two immediately, a Sesshoumaru and a Rin, who struck me as too authentic to be real. She looked like a little girl and _he_ -

"Out of instinct I followed the two as they walked through the convention. I was certain that if I were onto them then I'd catch them with Naraku eventually. I'd need to be patient. And discrete. I could not let them suspect I followed them but, already, I was taking notes as to what my conversation ought to be if confronted.

"At last, at the moment of frustration, came one, little triumph. It changed by world forever. If only I choose a different two to follow. If only they noticed and sacred me away. I would have been spared this burden.

"Yes. Naraku - _Naraku_ - just like the cosplayers of Sesshoumaru and Rin, Naraku seemed to be too perfect. Then it struck as if a bolt out of the blue. What if that Naraku wasn't just imitation? I rejected that idea - of course - it had to be a man within a costume. I can't deny the impression, though, that it _was_ Naraku. By posture. By manner. The gaze froze blood.

"I was chilled when _it_ glanced toward my direction. I don't know if the actor - _Naraku_ - I don't know if _it_ actually saw me or if that gaze of a predator was a part of that act. I don't know - yet, when eyes locked I swear it was Naraku and it knew. I was read like a book!

"Naraku smiled. It was hard not to jump and look away but I pretended I was not aware. I let the motion of the crowd dictate my action so I only turned away when a trio of wolf-demons sped off in front of me.

"Liberated, I stopped to ponder the situation. What was I doing? So I found the ring of trolls. What then? What now? The whole venture was foolish. I could not believe that I thought if I understood them that I could have realized how to defeat them. The mystery only deepened, though, I knew less and less by the minute.

"I decided to leave.

"I just needed to use the bathroom a moment. Then, again, fate reared its face!

"No sooner was I inside of the bathroom but I realized that Naraku, _my Naraku_, entered behind. Immediately I veered from the urinal to the toilet. There, inside, I pretended to sit while I peaked through the gaps of the stall. I watched, I waited. Naraku - cosplayer, actor - left this object atop the counter between sinks. Then a voice at the doorway distracted it - who could have been washing off the makeup as far as I knew - just like that it stepped out of the bathroom leaving behind that object.

"I couldn't believe my luck. That was the quiet, mysterious leader of the trolls. My tormentor! And fate dropped that onto my pal. My heart raced as a plan of action formed within my mind.

"I needed to act fast but I needed to be sure too. I waited a minute. I stood, flushing the toilet and only just bracing my pants beneath my shirt. I poked my head out of the stall. The bathroom seemed deserted. I couldn't find Naraku.

"I grasped the object and shot back into the stall. I didn't look at it. I placed it into my bag then I waited. I couldn't leave the bathroom. If Naraku was outside then I would have been caught. I needed others to enter and exit the bathroom. There would be others and, indeed, they trickled into the bathroom by groups. The people carried official convention bags.

"If Naraku was outside. If Naraku realized it - that the object was missing. If the dots were connected. Well, with everyone coming in and out of the bathroom he wouldn't know who took it. I'd be safe within the crowd.

"I don't know how long I waited except that, eventually, the complex became very very quiet and I realized it was time to leave."

"It wasn't until I got back that I realized what that object was. I was overcome by a mix of triumph and dread. Like everything about that convention I was left with more questions than answers. It was a PDA, Kano, a PDA! Why didn't Naraku come back to get it? So it dawned - what if I was _supposed_ to find it and take it? Like it was part of a trap?"

"So, wait, the PDA you gave that guy was what you took at the convention?"

"Yes.

"I kept it about a month. I tried to unlock its secrets. But the real, juicy parts of the data were off limits. Protected by password. But there was a lot of information available, though, I used those tidbits along with what I gathered from my other investigations to verify that yes it belonged to my antagonists.

"What I read revealed a startling fact. These trolls lived together inside the same, exact building. And there were others too. It was like a cult centered at the outskirts of this remote fishing village. Look, Kano, the PDA detailed things like personalities. Detailed extreme physical descriptions. We wouldn't put that kind of information inside a PDA without protection. Unless the information needed to be available instantly. The worst part of it, when I sat and combed through the data, was that the people listed within the PDA were just transparent aliases of characters of Inuyasha.

"I reassessed the situation. It was odd that I'd let a virtual internet dispute become so real. I needed to re-center my mind. I left the fandom and the internet and I returned to my library. I decided to research topics for a book I wanted to write. You know, the book about aliens, you know."

Kano patted Noguichi's head then sipped another glass of water.

"I got interested in secret ancient societies and the knowledge they possessed about the past. What they controlled and what they allowed to leak. That lead me to study artifacts said to be older than man. Evidences of a past not within collective human memory.

"But there's only so far that takes you.

"If there was history before history, chances are that the knowledge accumulated by the ancients would have outlasted the vestiges of their _physical_ civilization. The Egyptians are gone yet a few of their books remain. Likewise, what if early man accessed the knowledge of that ancient race - but - orally not by letter? Then throughout the world there would be common outlines of things like mythologies and philosophies while the particulars would be colored by a civilization's interpretation. There exists within Confucian thought, with respect to government and ethics, parallels that can be drawn with the works of the Greeks and the ideals of the Enlightenment. The idea that the universe is a perfect, vast machine that runs eternally can be seen in the Buddhist and Hinu religions as well as the physics of Newton.

"What if, indeed, philosophy sprang out of the same exact source? And religion? And science? Language, too, shows the suggestions of a unified kind of past. Latin and Sanskrit are the offspring of an earlier, world-wide language.

"What if more than just _ideas_ survived through these great gulfs of time?

"When my research hit a dead-end I revisited the PDA.

"Kano, I need to say _this_ now while it's still fresh!

"This is a fishing village. This is a very ancient part of Japan. I should have known -

"The PDA's address led into a vacant part of town. It was like a ghost-town. I found myself driving through its streets. Not another car, not another person. I located the building: it was a warehouse with about five to six levels by the look of its windows. Its façade was dark and imposing complete with remnants of fire-escapes jetting through its contours. It was just like those kind of old-style buildings that get turned into condominiums.

"Then, all of a sudden, I noticed a light turned on at the very top floor.

"I parked at the end of the street to avoid detection. Through the backseat I observed the location safely with a pair of binoculars. I don't know how long I watched the building. It must have been ten minutes. Eventually I saw two men leave the building. The first I recognized immediately. It was the Sesshoumaru of the convention. The second was _Inuyasha._ Kano, there weren't any other conventions and it was way way too late at night to be going about in cosplay. It took me a second, then, to realize _they weren't in costume!_ That's what they looked like. Like Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha. The hair. The eyes. Only the ears were masked by caps. Just like the series down to the same exact colors.

"Gods - can't you see it? They were the perfect cosplayers _because they were Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha!_

"My curiosity was peaked. Under the cover of night I got out of the car and walked toward the building. The light atop it - its penthouse I supposed - was still aglow. The two who exited were already two blocks away. With such deserted streets I felt I would not be watched. Well. I thought. I hoped.

"I didn't want to enter directly through its front glass doors although what I saw of the lobby beyond was empty. I opted, instead, to explore the alley next to the warehouse. If it was either then or now a warehouse then were would be evidence of a loading-bay. Instead what I found was a path, inclined and carved out of the sidewalk, that headed into a doorway at the basement. It was not locked, but, while I pushed it aside I realized it was kept secure by a chain. There was enough slack left that I was able to open it just enough to slide into the building.

"I was inside the basement and my only thought, beside not getting caught, was to go upward. Upward - I recall it, that urge. It was reckless. Anyway, I was in the middle of a hallway, at the end of it was doorway. I opened it so so carefully and I discovered stairs. Like a rectangular spiral clinging onto the walls of the shaft, the stairs seemed to wind into the infinite. But - despite the need to climb and see what lay within the penthouse - I was distracted by another curious discovery. Just behind the doorway into which I entered the shaft, along a part of the structure I did not fathom until the doorway shut, I saw a ladder that led _downward._

"And then and there came a sensation that froze my body. Standing at the top and gazing at the bottom of that ladder I saw a moat of garbage. Beyond it I saw a doorway ajar. The fragment of an arm - thick and fury - reached out of that void and shut it.

"I was tempted to run away at the realization that I was almost caught but already I came too far to quit.

"Adrenaline clouded my judgment then. Fear - and the accident that followed - tormented my memory. How much of what I saw was real? How much of that was imagined? Glimpses of images. Impressions of scenes. Like flashes of a dreamscape. I remember hearing voices speaking a languages familiar yet alien.

"I caught bits and pieces of artwork whose nature I could not identify.

"Then, in what I presumed to be a secret, underground library, cloaked by a climate unnaturally frigid and dry, I found scrolls. They were scattered about tables. They were mixed with notebooks full of writing I deciphered only very superficially. What I gauged was this: information going back millennia was displayed everywhere! Yet the understanding of it was denied by alphabets I could not read through its obscurity.

"I heard a scream. I feared it was my own but - no - it was coming out of levels yet deeper into the building. It issued again - closer and closer. I realized I needed to act then I struggled to hide. I tried everything: behind a bookcase, under a table, within the shadows and darkness.

"A hatch opened and a combination of light with fog poured into the chamber. The air seemed to be so poisoned it caused nearby artwork to burst into flame. A woman tried to slither out of the hatch. She struggled; she grabbed the side of a bookcase which then broke and sent tomes onto the floor. She scream again and again. At last she reached the edge of the hatch and I realized to my horror that he arms from elbow to hand were _chewed!_ Her face - _her face _- was digested. She gave one last struggle and then a tentacle - thick and hairy - wrapped about her neck and dragged her body out of sight.

"Then the only sound that followed was a laugh - Naraku's laugh - ku ku ku."

"Naraku?" Kano whispered. The pitcher of water was empty.

"Yes." Noguichi looked down. "The last thing I remember is running out of the lobby and getting into my car. I crashed against a wall. It was thoughtless but I was frantic. I can't be sure of it - maybe my mind erased the knowledge out of memory - I wonder, though, if I was chased."

"Alright but you talked about proof, Nogu. I mean, I should've taken notes. Ancient civilizations, secret and hidden societies, real-life anime characters. What does it mean, anyway?"

Noguichi leaned toward a backpack and Kano placed it atop the bed.

"The police found the PDA since I left that inside the glove-compartment. They didn't rummage through my backpack. Thank the gods! Else they would have found it too and I don't know if Inuyasha would have let me live to tell the tale."

Rummaging through its contents, the kind of accessories a professor of history would have taken everywhere, Noguichi produced a scroll.

"It's a silk scroll. I must have taken it out of the library. I think it rolled off of a bookcase the woman damaged. I don't remember taking, though, even tucking it into my bag. But there it is. The proof." Kano unrolled it carefully. "It's very very old. If it's authentic it would have to be hundreds of thousands of years old." The material of the silk, which was copper-colored, gradually attained a thinner and brighter appearance. "The alphabet is proto-European, proto-Altaic, the forerunner of Latin and Chinese. I've translated it. Well. The first, nine paragraphs."

Even while they spoke the material, exposed to the damp air of spring, continued to degrade.

"It talks about the history of that earlier race of man. They were demons, Kano! Look! Look! Their civilization didn't end. It isn't over. It's simply evolved to such a degree of perfection that it doesn't need central, physical authorities to exert influence anymore. No empires. No governments. No technology." He leaned into Kano, stretching his leg into its maximum extent, he whispered, "They're domesticating us. They're at the top while we're at the bottom. They're controlling us just like we're controlling the lives of dogs. We are nothing to them. The hits they drop about their nature - creating myths about demons then manga about Inuyasha - to _them_ it's like us playing with pets. They toy with us for their sport. Kano -"

It was then - too late - that the degradation of the silk became apparent. Free of the climate of that library, it started to decay. Fading and facing until the very ink became dusk. At once the silk burst into a puff of smoke and the ashes wafted across the air.

"That's - yeah - that's OK, Nogu." He gripped his friend's shoulder. "I tell you what, when you get better, I'll take you to Hojo Land, I'll even ride that Steel Skeleton with you again. Remember last time when you got so scared you kept saying the names of the emperors in order? That was fun, wasn't it? Er? And we can stop this crazy talk of demons and - Nogu?"

"I was so stupid, Kano. I can't believe I would be that stupid."

"Rest up, kid, I've got to go anyway." He took the jacket and flung it across his shoulder. "Get better, OK? And no more adventures - you're not Indiana Jones."

The door shut and Noguichi was alone with those embers of silk.

* * *

"What happened?" asked Inuyasha. He stood as the man with the jacket came into view. "Is? Is!"

"He doesn't know anything, mutt-face, you should've left him alone." The man adjusted a bandana across his brow then donned the jacket. "He's a crazy history professor. Who cares if he slashes us every now and then. It's not like it hasn't happened."

Inuyasha glared at the demon. "Koga! You said you wouldn't talk about that again!" The white-haired creature crossed its arms and sulked as the elevator arrived. "You better hope Naraku doesn't find out."

**END**


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